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“What are you doing?” he said.
“I’ve got a corduroy shirt on. I don’t need it,” I replied.
“I’m not cold. My malaria kicks into gear sometimes.”
“You’ve got to go to the VA.”
He coughed deep in his chest and tried to pretend he was clearing his throat. “I’ve got to tell you something, big mon. I haven’t done right by you. Because of me, you protected Gretchen and have probably gotten yourself in a lot of trouble with Helen.”
“I’m always in trouble with Helen.”
“When this is over, we’re all going down to the Keys. I’m going to pay for everything. It’s going to be like it used to be. We’re going to fish for marlin in blue water and fill up the locker with kingfish and dive for lobsters on Seven Mile Reef.”
“You bet,” I said.
He was looking straight ahead, the soft green glow of the dashboard lighting his face, hollowing his eyes. “I got this sick feeling in my stomach,” he said. “Like everything is ending. Like I’ve been full of shit for a lifetime but I never owned up to it.”
“Don’t say that about yourself.”
“Gretchen paid the tab for my mistakes. When you steal a little girl’s childhood, you can never give it back.”
“You’ve tried to square it for years. Don’t blame yourself, Clete.”
“I’ve got an AK in the trunk.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s modified, but it’s untraceable. No matter what else happens, the guys who killed Julie are going down.”
“Can’t let you do that, podna.”
“You know I’m right. Don’t pretend you don’t.”
I kept my eyes straight ahead. We were speeding down the two-lane toward Jeanerette, the bayou chained with fog under the moon, the Angus in the fields clustered under the live oaks. I waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. Instead, he clicked on the FM station from the university in Lafayette. The DJ was playing “Faded Love” by Bob Wills. I stared at the radio, then at Clete.
“You said Gretchen was whistling ‘The San Antonio Rose’ the night you saw her clip Bix Golightly?”
“Do you have to put it that way?”
“Does it make sense that a girl from Miami would be whistling a Western tune written seventy years ago?”
“I asked her about that. She said she heard it on a car radio, and it stuck in her head.” He was looking at the road while he spoke.
“She heard it on a car radio in Algiers?”
“Yeah.”
“And she didn’t do the hit on Waylon Grimes?”
“No.”
“Was the car playing the song not far from Grimes’s place?”
He looked at me. “I’m not sure. I didn’t ask.”
“Varina Leboeuf is big on Western art and music and clothes. She collects Indian artifacts from the Southwest.”
“You think she did the hit on Grimes? Maybe on Frankie Gee at the bus depot in Baton Rouge?”
